I Never Let Go
by vampirediva07
Summary: On April 15, 1912, the lives of everyone aboard the RMS Titanic were forever changed as the great ocean liner sank. Rose lost everything, only to gain something...special.
1. Rose's New Life

**A/N: I first fell in love with the story of _Titanic_ when I was 7 and even more so when the movie came out after I turned 9. I'm now 23 and can honestly say that I still love everything about this ship, this story, the movie, and the people who inspired the legends. This is my first fanfic for _Titanic_, so let me know what you think. Please _review_!**

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Five months had come and past since the sinking of the RMS Titanic and there wasn't a night that went by where Rose didn't wake up screaming in the middle of the night, gasping and reaching out for someone that would never come back. Her face was almost always covered in tears and sweat from her nightmares. Jack was gone, down to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, never to return again to her life to give her joy and happiness like she'd known during those few days on the Titanic. He heart had broken the moment she realized that he would not wake with her constant shakes and whispering his name as she realized that one of the lifeboats had come back to help people from the water. Part of her had wanted to give up and die with him, but she remembered her promise to Jack that she would go on and never let go, so she fought to survive and made it out of the icy waters of the North Atlantic. But not without the scars that ran deep inside of her heart, covering the now gaping hole where Jack once resided for those few precious days that they were together. But his last words would forever haunt her.

_"Winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me... it brought me to you. And I'm thankful for that, Rose. I'm thankful. You must do me this honor. You must promise me that you'll survive, that you won't give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise."_

_"I promise."_

_"Never let go."_

_"I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go."_

Coming out of one of her nightmares, Rose shot up from her bed and came to realize that she was not in the water, but instead her own bed. Her heart racing, she swung her feet off the side of the bed and felt them touch the cool wooden floor beneath her. The apartment she resided in wasn't much, but it was home and it was her own, not connected to any sort of money to tie her down. Her money was hard to come by as she had no skills to speak of, outside of knowing how to weave her way in and out of higher class society. But otherwise, she had no work skills, which made it difficult to find a job in New York City so she had to leave and find a place elsewhere. She wound up in a familiar place; one dear to her heart. Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The very place where Jack grew up. She figured it would be a good place to start over and live her life free of her mother, Cal, and the very society that she despised. Thankfully, no one knew her here, so she was able to live in peace and find work as a seamstress for a local theater without anyone questioning who she was or why she was working. It paid the bills, so she was thankful to have the job and work with the wonderful women who took her under their wing and taught her how to sew, mend, and make costumes for the productions that were put on.

Starting over hadn't been easy for Rose though, who was used to living in first class society. Her first two months were terrifying as she moved from the city out to Wisconsin, paying for her ticket through selling the jacket she had been wearing when Titanic sank. People were willing to pay a pretty penny for something from the great tragedy that was the sinking of the ship, so she was able to sell it off to afford her ticket and the cost of a hotel for a few days until she found an apartment and a job. From there, her new life really started while she let go of the old one she had been raised in. No more useless parties and galas or people planning her whole life for her according to who they could marry her off to based on the most money or insurance for a comfortable life. Too many girls in her social class did that, but she escaped to a whole new life.

As she got up from her bed, she made her way into the bathroom and flicked on the light, going to the sink to splash some cold water on her face. It was September, so the weather was a little stifling outside. The cold water felt good to her skin as it woke her a little and washed away some of the sweat that had pooled around her face from the nightmare. Looking in the mirror, her red, curly hair was frayed in several directions from the braid she had put it in to sleep, but otherwise looked fine. The clock on the dresser read nearly five in the morning, so she shuffled her way back to the bed and laid back down, realizing she had about two more hours before she had to get up for work.

The bed was comfortable enough as she laid back down and curled onto her side, resting her head on the pillow. September brought the cooler airs with the changing of the seasons, which made Rose happy as she was no longer stifled by the hot, humidity of the summer making her sweat in her sleep without the nightmares added on top of that. But she also remembered that fall meant that winter would soon be arriving. Jack had told her about the winters in Chippewa Falls, so she was prepared to bundle up much more and light many fires in her apartment to keep warm through those months. But for now, she was enjoying the more pleasant weather while she could. Laying there, she breathed deeply and was reminded of something else that would soon change her life. A stirring from her stomach caused her to move her hand to the gentle swell beneath her gown where a child greeted her hand with a kick.

A baby. Her baby. _Jack's child_.

Five months had come and gone since the sinking of the Titanic. And Rose was five months pregnant with her first child. A beautiful son or daughter that she hoped would have Jack's eyes and sweet smile. The permanent reminder of the love of a man she met on the most desperate night of her life, who saved her and showed her that life could be so much more beautiful, even if you were poor and had no connections in life. Jack had given her a gift far greater than any diamond or title. He had given her life, in so many ways.


	2. John Doe

**A/N: Thank you all so much for all the story alerts so far! I'm glad you're interested in this story and hope that it catches your interest the more I put into it. This is one I've been considering writing for a long time and have finally put into words. I apologize for the short chapters that are coming at first, but they will get longer I promise. Please _review_ and let me know your thoughts!**

**Again, I own nothing except my original characters!  
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Emily stood in the corner of the hospital, making sure that all the medications were in order for the patients that needed them overnight. There were a few that needed sedatives to sleep through the night peacefully without any disturbances. She had been a nurse for over three years now and loved her job. Since it was 1912, there weren't many jobs available for women that were considered proper or appropriate, so she was lucky to have gotten the training that she needed after leaving home at the tender age of eighteen when her parents decided that it was time for her to be married because she was of age. Emily hadn't wanted to be married, so she left and took off toward the East. Winding up in New York, she found work at a local hospital where many wounded firefighters, police officers, and people found on the streets were brought into. It wasn't always the nicest place to work, but she loved her job and she knew that what she did was a good service to others, which was what she felt called to.

As she finished organizing the medicines, she made her rounds to the different beds to check on the patients in her ward. Most of them were burn victims of a recent fire on the lower West side, so they were covered with medicines to make their skin heal. The smell was sometimes unbearable, but she made due to take care of them and redress their wounds. There were a few others that had some smoke inhalation, but once their lungs cleared, they would be sent home. However, the last man on her ward was not a fire victim or someone that inhaled smoke. It was a man brought in from the harbor on a ship that had extreme hypothermia, water in his lungs, and memory loss. It had taken three months to get him to maintain a normal body temperature without constant IV fluids, but he finally started to heal three months after he was brought in.

The man regained consciousness again once they were able to get his body temperature to maintain, but when he woke he had no memory of who he was or what happened to him. From what Emily had heard and read, the men who brought him in found the man around the area where the Titanic had gone down five months prior. The day after the sinking, men on a fishing ship found him floating on some debris, unconscious and near death. After pulling him in, they had wrapped him in several blankets and used warm water to slowly bring him back to life before they reached New York and brought him to the hospital. Thankfully, they were able to save his extremities from amputation as they slowly helped him heal. Now, five months after the incident, he was conscious during the day and able to talk with her, which was a nice change from her usual patients that were unconscious through sedation.

"How are you tonight John?" she asked, coming up next to his bed. Since he had no name or recollection of who he was, they had dubbed him John Doe.

"Doin' alright, I guess," he replied, sitting up a little further in the bed. Since he was still a little weak from his ordeal, the doctor had ordered him stay in bed, except to get up and walk around a few times during the day. "How are you Em?"

She smiled. "I'm doing okay. Just got here for the night shift, so I'll be here a while," she replied, sitting down on the stool next to his bed. "Did they get you out of bed to walk today?"

"Yeah, it wasn't too bad. My legs aren't that strong yet, but I have hope that it'll get better as I start walkin' more during the day," he said, hinting with a little hope in his voice. "Doc says that I should be able to go in a few weeks, if I keep improving."

"Oh?" she asked, curious as to what would happen when her star patient would leave the ward. "Where will you go then?"

"I dunno. Maybe light on outta here and go somewhere interesting, like Paris," he replied.

"Well if they love your drawings there as much as they do here, then you'll be a hit," she said, grinning at him. John was an artist of sorts, sketching out the people in the hospital just by watching and observing them. He captured their very essence in his drawings, which made Emily curious as to who he really was since he had so much natural talent. The doctors encouraged him to keep drawing, hoping something would spark a memory or maybe a trigger to bring back who he had been before he came to them.

"Maybe. Who knows?" he asked, chuckling and folding the blanket up around his waist. "But I do know that I wanna travel somewhere far from here and live a grand life, just free and floating from place to place."

"You will," Emily said, smiling at him. "Maybe one day something will spark your memory if you travel because it sounds like you used to travel a lot before your accident."

John shrugged and nodded. "It could, but it's been five months since they brought me here...and I got nothin' but my art to tell me who I was before all this happened."

"Don't give up on it John...you'll figure it out," she said encouragingly. "And when you do, we'll pop open some champagne and celebrate because I'm sure that you are very missed by whomever you left behind."

Squeezing his hand, she smiled and handed him his dose of medication to help him sleep pain free since his legs were still somewhat sore and unused to walking around. Once he had taken his pills, she helped him lay down on his back before stepping away to let him fall asleep while she filed some paperwork. John Doe was one of the nicest men she had ever met and she hoped that he remembered who he was because a man like that surely had a girl waiting somewhere. In fact, she was sure of it because every night while he slept, he only ever uttered one word. A name really. _Rose._


	3. Truth

**A/N: Thank you all so very much for all the reviews/alerts! It makes my day to see those and hear what you have to say. I'm glad that you guys are interested in where this is going because I can assure you that it's going to get interesting! Leave me a _review_ and let me know what you think!**

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After a hard day of work, Rose was always ready to come home to her apartment and sit down to relax for a little while before she made herself something to eat. It had taken lots of trial and error with cooking before she finally managed to learn how to make a few simple meals for herself. One of her fellow seamstresses, Rebecca, wrote down some of her own recipes that would be easy for Rose to follow to help her out. She would also come over from time to time to teach Rose some new techniques, which Rose appreciated so much since she was pregnant and alone. The company was always welcome in her home, especially because she didn't like to be alone a lot of the time.

Rebecca Anderson was one of the many women who had taught her how to sew when she first got the job, teaching her a few techniques that would make her life easier and her work go faster. She was married and had a little one of her own that her mother kept during the day while she was at work. Her husband, James, worked in one of the factories close by, so he visited frequently and brought them all lunch from the local diner from time to time. The Andersons were one of the many reasons that Rose had survived our in Wisconsin on her own without having to sell the Heart of the Ocean that she found in her pocket upon her arrival to New York. Every single time she looked at it, her stomach would lurch and she would think of Cal and how much she hated him and the society that she came from. She didn't need their money. Being poor and happy was better than being rich and miserable like she had been her entire life before the Titanic changed everything.

After getting a pot of tea on the stove, Rose sat down to relax and think about what she wanted to eat for dinner. The baby had very distinct taste for what he or she wanted to eat, so there were often times when she would eat something and then it would come back up a few hours later if the baby didn't like it. So she had to be careful with what she ate for a while. A knock on her door brought Rose to her feet from her chair as she went to answer it, finding Rebecca standing there with a basket, no doubt full of food.

"Rebecca, I wasn't expecting you tonight," she said, genuinely surprised that someone had come over.

Her friend laughed and nodded. "Oh I know, but I wanted to come surprise you with a little something.

"Well thank you," she said, smiling as she opened the door to let Rebecca in. "I just put some tea on the stove if you'd like some."

"I'd love some actually," Rebecca said as she came in and sat the basket on the table before taking a seat across from where Rose had been sitting before. "Very little sugar and no lemon please, I'm allergic."

Rose walked across the room and pulled out two tea cups before pouring some of the tea in each one, adding a slice lemon in hers and some sugar to Rebecca's before bringing them to the table and taking her seat. Settling down, she fixed her dress so it rested comfortably over her rounded stomach. The baby, who had been quiet for most of the day, started to move around and kick as she smiled. Even though she still missed Jack with all of her heart, it was nice to know that she had a little piece of him with her always.

"I remember when I was waiting for my little William," Rebecca said, smiling at her knowingly. "He never ceased to move during any part of the day, even at night when I was trying to sleep."

A smile spread across Rose's face. "This little one is very active at night, especially right as I am trying to go to sleep."

"James would talk to the baby at night to make him go to sleep so I could get some rest," Rebecca said, sipping on her tea before she paused and realized what she was saying to Rose. "Oh I'm so sorry...I didn't mean that..."

"No it's alright," she said, shaking her head. "You didn't mean any harm."

"It must be hard...doing this on your own."

Rose nodded. "It is...but I know that this baby is a gift. Something I didn't expect."

Rebecca smiled a little. "Sometimes the best surprises come to us in little packages. Did...did your husband know?"

"He didn't," she said, looking down at her stomach. "Rebecca, can you keep a secret?"

"Of course," she replied, reaching over and taking Rose's hand with her own. "You know I keep secrets better than any of the other girls at the theater, including Mary."

Rose took a deep breath and nodded. "Jack...wasn't my husband. Not in the way that you think or believe he was."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Jack and I were never married," Rose explained carefully. "Not in the legal sense or in the church...even though I believe we were in our own way."

Rose went on to tell Rebecca the story of how she met Jack on the night she almost jumped off the back of the ship because of the inertia of her life and how he pulled her back, saving her life. Rebecca seemed entranced as she went on to tell her how they got to know one another, even though he was from third class and she was a first class passenger, and how she was fascinated with the life that he lived because it was so carefree. She told her of the first class dinner party and then the third class dance that she and Jack went to that evening. The story seemed to flow on as she remembered Sunday morning when he tried to tell her that her world had her trapped and that she would die if she didn't break free. When she got to Sunday evening, when she found Jack and then how he drew her completely naked, Rebecca blushed.

"I promise you...it was the most erotic moment of my life...up until then at least," she said, smiling a little.

"What happened next?" Rebecca asked, completely immursed in the story Rose was telling.

Smiling, Rose went on with her tale and how Cal's spy came after them and how she and Jack got away to the cargo hold of the ship where they made love in the car. It was a part of the story that Rose felt deeply connected to because she loved Jack so much. But as they got to the sinking, tears formed in her eyes as she explained how she had been put in a lifeboat by Jack and Cal, only to jump back on the ship because she couldn't leave Jack. The story seemed to take on a life of it's own as Rose told the rest and how she and Jack stayed together after the ship sank from under them. When she got to Jack's death, tears were streaming down her own cheeks as she held her stomach protectively.

"I promised him...that I would never let go of my promise to go on and that I would survive," she said, rubbing her stomach gently. "It was the hardest thing in the world to let him go and get off that wood panel when the lifeboat came back, but I did it for him. The lifeboat pulled me out of the water, along with five others, before we boarded the Carpathia and made it to New York. When we arrived, I gave my name as Rose Dawson and decided to start my life over."

At the end of the story, Rose looked up and saw Rebecca in tears too. This was a feeling she knew too well as she had spent many nights crying because she missed Jack. But she knew that she had a promise to keep. And that was what kept her going most of the time. That, and the baby that was growing inside of her. The baby was Jack's child and she knew that it would be her greatest treasure.

"I moved out here to feel closer to Jack...because this was the place where he was raised. I figured starting my life over here would be the best place," she went on. "When I arrived, I found out shortly after that I was pregnant...and that I would be having Jack's child, so I figured it was easier to tell people that he was my husband and that he had died in the sinking, which was true."

Reaching over, Rebecca pulled her into a hug and held her as a sister would. "Your secret is safe with me...no one will ever know otherwise," she whispered before pulling back and looking her in the eyes.

"Thank you for your descretion," she said sincerely. "Jack was the only man I've ever loved and he saved me...in every way a person can be saved. Now I have the chance to live my life free of constricting society rules. All because of Jack."

Rose knew that Jack had been the one to inspire her to move away from New York out to a place where she had no aquaintances. There she was forced to make new friends and make a life for herself and their child. Someday, when their child was old enough, she was going to take him or her to the beach and the pier at Santa Monica in California where they would ride horses and swim in the ocean. She would also take her son or daughter on the roller coaster there and make sure he or she had the best life possible. It was her promise to Jack and she was going to make sure that she fulfilled it, no matter what.


End file.
